





gQgwaaaoos^^ 

1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS,"! 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 





















LIFE AND SERVICES 


OF 


PROFESSOR B^B. EDWARDS. 


A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN THE 


CHAPEL OP ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 


JUNE 25, 1852. 


BY EDWARDS 


> " 

A. ?ARK. 

n 


Prom the Bibliotheca Sacra for October, 1852. 


(ffc 

ANDOVER: 



' 0< WaIH 1 





BX7ZLO 
•H2,7 ~Ps 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by 

WARREN F. DRAPER, 

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts, 


I 


5 


DISCOURSE. 


John 21: 7.— That disciple whom Jesus loved. 

Men will cross the sea in order to view a mountain or a water¬ 
fall; but there is more grandeur in the human spirit, than in all 
material nature. There is a glory of the sun, another of the moon, 
and another of the stars, but the glory of one mind excelleth them 
all. What shall it profit a man, if he gain all worlds, and lose his 
own soul! And we feel a peculiar interest in the mind which has 
an original, distinctive character. The mass of men copy after one 
another. They lose their individual traits. But when we find the 
man who has a character of his own, and exhibits a marked speci¬ 
men of human worth, we pause and survey and admire. Especially 
are our hearts drawn toward him, when he may be described, not as a 
philosopher whom men respect, not as a patriot whom they applaud, 
but, in the beautiful words of our text, as that disciple whom, Jesus 
loved . 

The brother who has so recently been called to lean on his Re¬ 
deemer’s breast, had rare traits and a unique history. His character 
was formed by a severe discipline. We may estimate its worth by 
its cost. In proportion to our interest in it, is the difficulty of de¬ 
scribing it. No man can paint the exact hues of the morning sky. 
In our attempts to portray the delicate features of our friend, we are 
often obliged to fall back on the comprehensive but apt designation; 
He was that disciple whom Jesus loved . Let us hear a broken nar¬ 
rative of his outer and his inner life. 

Bela Bates Edwards was born at Southampton, Massachusetts, 
on the fourth of July, 1802. He had, therefore, nearly completed a half 
century, when, on the morning of April 20,1852, he was called home. 
It was often a pleasing anticipation to him, that when he died he 
should go to dwell with a long line of godly progenitors. He sprang 
from that old Welsh family, which embraces among its descendants 
the two Jonathan Edwardses and President Dwight. His grand- 



4 


father, Samuel Edwards, was a parishioner of the exemplary divine 
at Northamptpn. Spiritually born under the instruction of the Presi¬ 
dent, he loved to consider himself as a son of that great man. He 
removed to Southampton in middle age, and remained deacon of the 
church in that town, until he died, u an old disciple.” Not long after 
the death of Samuel, his son Elisha Edwards, the father of our friend, 
was chosen deacon of the church, and he continued faithful in that 
office forty years. He was a vigorous, sedate, discreet man; a firm, 
well-informed, energetic, self-distrusting Christian. His wife, Ann 
Bates, was perhaps as highly esteemed as her husband, for a saint¬ 
like life, but was more versatile and sprightly. She died when her 
son, near whose fresh grave we are now convened, was in his twenty- 
fourth year. Those who saw him bending under this affliction, said 
one to another: “ Behold how he loved her.” He felt a pious joy in 
looking forward to his college vacations, when he might “ place some 
greener sods upon her grave.” In his thirty-first year, while called 
on official business to a great distance from Southampton, he heard 
of his father’s ill health. He resolved to visit, at once, the scene 
where he feared that he was to be again bereaved. One. of the par¬ 
ties interested in the official business, advised him to wait until he 
had completed all his engagements. “ You do not know what a 
father I have to lose,” was the filial reply of the mourner, who has¬ 
tened to his desolate homestead. His household ties alone were 
strong enough to hold him back from many a youthful folly. 

The childhood of our friend was a marked one. His baptism was 
a kind of epoch in that Abrahamic household. The rite was per¬ 
formed by Dr. Samuel Hopkins, of Hadley, Massachusetts. The 
parents, especially the mother, dedicated their infant to God with an 
unaccountable, indefinable impression, that they were offering a pecu¬ 
liarly rich gift, and that signal blessings would attend the young 
child’s life. The child grew, and won the general love by that sweet¬ 
ness of temper, which, as it cheered those who surrounded his cradle, 
afterwards soothed those who stood at his dying couch. He was not 
a forward nor a brilliant lad; he was modest and retiring; but he 
was often pointed at, as a model of conscientiousness and propriety 
to the other children of the neighborhood. His passion for books was 
developed early. He would read when other children played. Their 
gambols did not interrupt him, as he sat or lay upon the floor, with 
his eyes fastened upon the instructive page. Often, he did not hear 
the voice which summoned him from his volume of history to his field¬ 
work or to his meals. But, although he had his father’s sedateness, 


5 


lie had also his mother’s vivacity. At certain times, he exhibited that 
sportive vein which, in his maturer years, enlivened his converse with 
select friends. He had not a boisterous wit, but a delicate mirthful¬ 
ness flowed through his intercourse, like the gentle stream that varie¬ 
gates the fruit-bearing fields. In his tender childhood, his company 
was prized for that quiet humor suggesting more than was uttered; 
for that half serious smile giving the beholder only a glimpse of the 
innocent thoughts which prompted it; for that felicitous ambiguity of 
phrases stealing over the mind of the listener, first to surprise and 
then to gladden him. In maturer age, as if without intending it, lie 
lighted up his statistical records, here and there, with the gleams of 
his chastened but playful fancy. Even in some of his most serious 
essays, we may detect the scintillation of his sprightly genius, illu¬ 
mining the dark back-ground. In his last years, the light of his deli¬ 
cate wit seemed to hide itself more and more under the physical 
maladies and official cares that oppressed him, but it never faded 
entirely from the view of those who watched the last flickerings of 
his life. As he was in childhood the joy of the old patriarchal man¬ 
sion, so even until the closing year of his half century, he was like the 
sunshine to his smiling household. 

Our friend was not originally earnest for a collegiate training. He 
loved his home so well, that he shrunk from the thought of leaving it, 
even for the sake of mental culture. He already had access to a library 
of four or five hundred volumes, enough to satisfy his incipient thirst 
for information. But his parents were desirous that he should, and 
had a presentiment that he would, become a minister of the Gospel. 
He lived in a parish from which about thirty young men have gone 
into the learned professions. At the age of fourteen he began to 
prepare for college. The last summer of his preparatory course he 
spent with his revered friend, Rev. Moses Hallock of Plainfield, 
Massachusetts, a fatherly teacher, who trained during his pastorate 
about a hundred young men for collegiate life. Mr. Edwards entered 
Williams College in 1820, and, having remained there a twelve- 
month, followed President Moore to Amherst, where, after three 
years of characteristic industry, he was graduated in 1824, at the age 
of twenty-two. His early field-labors had so invigorated his consti¬ 
tution that, without seeming to be fatigued or enfeebled, he could 
devote fourteen hours a day to the improvement of his mind. Even 
in his vacations, he shut himself up in his chamber at home, and thus 
acquired the name, among those who did not know Iris heart, of being 


6 


unsocial. Through life he kept up so close a companionship with 
the great and good men who communed with him in books, that 
strangers never learned the power of his social instincts. When we 
compare his earlier compositions with the classical and finished essays 
of his later days, we feel what we before knew, the amount and worth 
of his hard work. That polished elegance came not to him by chance. 
Iiis compressed energy of diction he had never attained, but by a 
severe drilling of himself over the pages of Tacitus. His life is a 
commentary on the stubborn truth, that a scholar must make himself, 
and that, with rare exceptions, the Father of our spirits giveth skill 
in all kinds of cunning workmanship to him, and him only who 
endures hardness and presses through much tribulation. 

The great event of Mr. Edwards’s college life was not the success 
which rewarded his literary zeal, but it was the apparent renovation 
of his heart by the God of his fathers. In his junior year at 
Amherst, he heard that some friends in his native town had become 
especially earnest for the welfare of their souls. His quick sympa¬ 
thies were aroused, and he began to meditate on his own relation to 
God. The world would have predicted, that the seemingly harmless 
tenor of his former life would prepare him for a tranquil conversion, 
and that a confidence in his own beautiful morality would gently fade 
away into a trust in Christ, as the starlight loses itself in the shining 
of the sun. But the depths of sin that lay hidden under the apparent 
simplicity of his aims, were uncovered before him by the Spirit of 
grace. He saw the abysses of his depravity, and he recoiled from 
them. His iron diligence in study was now relaxed. At this time 
the first revival in Amherst College was in progress. He was unable 
to endure the power of that revival. His pent-up feelings drove him 
for relief to his old paternal roof. His father’s voice had been often 
heard at midnight in prayer for the son who, in despite of all the 
reputed innocence of his life, had now come home like the down- 
stricken prodigal. One whole night that father and mother had 
spent in anxious entreaty for this their youngest surviving child, 
their Benjamin, whom they had consecrated to God with a prophetic 
faith. All the waves of the Divine judgment seemed now to be roll¬ 
ing over that cherished youth, and out of the depths was he crying, 
night and day, and all in vain, for one gleam of peace. Through ten 
successive days it seemed to him and to others, that he would faint 
under the sad revelations which he had received of his own enmity 
to God. His feet had well nigh slipped. His constitution broke 
down almost. We long to know the details of that dark scene. 


7 


But they are now among the secrets of the Almighty. Our friend 
was never able to describe them. Scarcely ever did he allude to 
them. He kept his classmates ignorant of them. All but two or 
three of his bosom friends supposed him to have been transformed 
in a comparatively placid way. The records of his Christian feeling 
he destroyed, for he was too lowly to think them fit for perusal, and 
it was his plan through life to conceal even the most interesting parts 
of his own history. One loose paper escaped him, and this probably 
marks the day when light from on high first dawned upon his soul. 
He writes: 

“Feb. 24, 1823. 

‘I’ll go to Jesus, though my sin 
Hath like a mountain rose, 

I know his courts, I’ll enter in, 

Whatever may oppose.’ 

B. B. Edwards.” 

“ O God, in view of the worth of the soul, and the importance of the 
present time, I have made the above resolution, not, as I hope, in my own 
strength. O Lord, remove the blindness and stupidity which covers my 
soul, and enable me to carry my determination into effect, and to Thee shall 
be the glory forever.” 

Previously, our friend had been a scholar from taste and, as he 
would say, from ambition. He now became one from Christian prin¬ 
ciple. His piety gave new impulse and direction to his literary zeal. 
So it should be. A student’s religion will prompt to a student’s life. 
Six weeks after his self-dedication to God, this faithful man penned 
a series of resolutions, to remember that every moment is precious, 
to rise very early in the morning for his daily toils, to be punctual in 
attending the public and social religious exercises of the college, to 
keep the Sabbath holy, to spend a certain time every morning, noon 
and evening in secret devotion, to be benevolent and kind in all his 
intercourse with his fellow students and the world. The year after 
he was graduated he spent in superintending the academy at Ashfield, 
Massachusetts. Here, too, he made and resolutely followed another 
series of resolutions, to spend six and a half or seven hours of the 
twenty-four in sleep, six hours in his school-room, five hours, at least, 
in severe study, two hours in miscellaneous reading, the first and last 
hours of each day in prayer, and some time in physical exercise. 
To this last resolve he was no less religiously faithful than to the 
others. “ Ashfield,” he writes, five years afterward, “ is one of the 


8 


cherished spots in my recollection. That little rivulet, — I know all 
its windings and all the murmurs which it makes; and the place 
where I read in the summer evenings, with no auditors ” but those 
that lived in the branches of the trees. 

It was in part by gratifying his love of nature, that our friend sus¬ 
tained his health amid the studies of his early manhood. In the 
rural scenes of his youth, he cultivated that sense of beauty, which 
ever afterward guided his thoughts and, in some degree, formed his 
character. Hour after hour did he regale himself at Amherst Col¬ 
lege, in looking out upon the fields which are spread along the banks 
of the Connecticut, and are bounded in the horizon by the wooded 
hills, and then in applying the words of a favorite Psalm, to express 
his adoring gratitude: “ Thou visitest the earth and waterest it, thou 
greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water.”' 

“ Thou crownest the year with thy goodness, and thy paths drop fat¬ 
ness j they drop upon the pastures of the wilderness, and the little 
hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks, 
the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they 
also sing.” “ I love,” he writes from Amherst, “ to sit at my third- 
story window about sunset, and read aloud the 65th, 104th, 145th 
and 147th Psalms, imagining that David once sung these sweet 
strains to his lyre, as he stood on Mount Zion, or wandered along the 
vale of Cedron, or heard the ‘ birds sing among the branches * on the 
sides of Carmel. In the one hundred and fourth Psalm, after survey¬ 
ing the heavens and the earth * satisfied with the fruit of thy works, and 
the great and wide sea,’ with what transport does he exclaim: ‘ I will 
sing unto the Lord as long as I live, I will sing praise unto my God 
while I have my being.’ To be able to utter such an exclamation in 
the sincerity of one’s heart, would be the perfection of happiness. If 
you will notice these animated Psalms, the description usually begins 
in heaven, an invocation to the angels, etc., exemplifying what Dr. 
Brown says, that the eye which looks to heaven seems, when it turns 
again to the objects of earth, to bring down with it a purer radiance, 
like the very beaming of the presence of the Divinity.” 

In 1825 Mr. Edwards entered the Andover Theological Institution. 
Here, at once, his poetic soul dilated itself in “ surveying the wide 
heavens that are stretched out over us.” In the depth of winter, he 
writes to a friend: “We have been living for two or three days past, 
in a world illuminated with gold and diamonds and all manner of 
unearthly things. I wish I could show you our sunsetting at this 


9 


moment. It surpasses all description. The whole frame of nature 
looks like a mass of liquid gold. A flood of fire is poured from the 
4 fount of glory,’ and a thousand forms of fleecy clouds are skirting 
the whole western horizon. Well may we exclaim, ‘ O Lord, how 
manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all. The 
spreading out of thy glory is in the earth and the heavens.’ ” 

But when our friend came to this Seminary, he found a richer 
treasure than the sun, moon or stars could proffer him. He then 
entered on the Elysium of his life. As he devoted his first year to 
the Greek and Hebrew Bible, he was fascinated every day with its 
simple, artless idioms, its mysterious, exhaustless suggestions. And 
when we reflect that he was called away from earth in less than a 
third of a year after his first teacher at the Seminary, we find a sad 
pleasure in remembering, that his earliest letters from this hill, and 
also the latest letters which he ever wrote, with his hand emaciated 
by the touch of death, breathed a spirit of admiring gratitude to the 
man who first astonished him with the wealth that lay hidden in the 
field of sacred philology. Deeply was he moved, when he heard that 
his venerable friend had gone before him to converse with the He¬ 
brew sages. “ Professor Stuart,” he said, “ appears to me as a great 
and noble man. I should be really glad to pronounce his eulogy.” 
He made this last remark, because he had been requested, months 
before, to edit the posthumous works and to write the personal history 
of his revered instructor. Nobly would he have performed this ser¬ 
vice. A distant age would have blessed God, for sending to us such 
a teacher, to be embalmed by such a pupil, — for allowing the strong 
features of our Luther to be sketched by the classic pencil of our 
Melanchthon. Still, it was better that the affectionate disciple should 
go up to a higher school, and be welcomed by his early friend with a 
heartier enthusiasm, and be led through the glories of the upper tem¬ 
ple by the same generous hand which had guided him here below 
into the sanctuary of biblical learning. So has God ordained it; and 
we rejoice that if our two friends must be severed from our commu¬ 
nion, they may unite with each other in a companionship of sacred 
study. How natural, to suppose that “ the old man eloquent” was 
among the first to expound the dark sayings of the prophets to that 
meek learner, who heard, and loved, and was silent, and adored! 

At the close of his first Seminary year, in 1826, Mr. Edwards was 
called to a tutorship in Amherst College. For two years (between 
1826 and 1828), he discharged the duties of this office with all that 
devotion to his Alma Mater which might have been expected from 
2 


10 


his filial and reverent spirit. He felt a deep interest in the religious 
welfare of the students; and several ministers of the Gospel ascribe 
the great change of their life to the instrumentality of his prudent 
and affectionate counsels. He was the tutor to whom Mr. Abbott 
alludes in the tenth chapter of his Corner Stone, as making an effec¬ 
tive address to a circle of irreligious students who had invited him to 
meet them, ostensibly for their improvement, but really for their 
sport. In the twenty-sixth year of his age, he had become so well 
known for his active Christian sympathies, that he was invited to 
several stations of commanding influence. On the eighth of May, 
1828, he was elected Assistant Secretary of the American Education 
Society. The duties to be devolved upon him at that time were, to 
edit the Quarterly Journal of the Society, to conduct the more impor¬ 
tant correspondence, to superintend the arrangements of the Society’s 
office, and occasionally to visit the beneficiaries at our literary insti¬ 
tutions. About the same time he was selected to become an Assistant 
Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis¬ 
sions, and, among other duties of that office, to edit the Missionary 
Herald. While these two solicitations were dividing his mind, he 
was asked to prepare himself for a Professorship in Amherst College. 
His nearest friends importuned him to take the Professor’s chair. 
Born to be a scholar, how could he refuse to spend his meditative life 
amid the groves of the institution which, from its infancy, had been 
among the most cherished objects of his care, and hard by the old 
family mansion which he continued to love with a child’s tenderness. 
But he cut the strings which bound him to the old familiar scenes of 
his youth, and accepted the Secretaryship of the Education Society. 
In 1828 he commenced the duties of that office, residing at Andover 
meanwhile, and for two years pursuing his studies in this Seminary. 

That he should have essayed to combine the toils of so important 
an office, with the severer toils of a theological student, was not wise. 
In his amiable desire for immediate usefulness, he failed here to 
exercise his wonted sagacity. It was afterwards one of his princi¬ 
ples, that the appropriate duties of the divinity school are more than 
sufficient to engross the attention of its members ; that no extraneous 
care should be allowed to interrupt the pupil’s investigation of that 
science which would claim the undisturbed attention of a seraph; 
that our ministerial candidates will be, in the end, more practical 
workmen* and render a better service to the mass of mankind, by 
humbly and patiently, for three or more years, learning to preach 
the Gospel, than by hastening from their preliminary seclusion into 


11 


a course of public effort; that it were better economy for our indigent 
youth to spend several months in some lucrative employment before 
or after their seminary course, than to break up the evenness of that 
course by the onerous duties of a teacher, agent, or public speaker. 
He had a reverence for the initiatory studies of a theologian, and 
dreaded every influence which could impair the taste or narrow the 
capacity for them. He prized this Seminary, as a retreat for young 
men who were in danger of sacrificing the permanent influence of 
their life, to a restlessness for contact with the bustling crowd. His 
own experience had made him grieve over any tendency in his pupils, 
to superadd foreign toil to their prescribed duty. He had learned 
that the superadded services would encroach upon the more appro¬ 
priate business of the scholar, or else the effort to be faithful in the 
two spheres, would endanger the physical system. The tone and 
vigor of his body and mind, suffered under the divided cares of his 
Middle and Senior years at the Seminary. He became despondent 
under their pressure. A dark veil was drawn between himself and 
his Saviour. He saw his own sins with unwonted vividness, and he 
trembled in view of them. For many weeks, he struggled and prayed 
and wept, without the least hope of his final salvation. He resided 
in what is now the office of our Treasurer, and were its walls to speak 
of all that has been endured within them, they would resound with 
many a plaintive groan which they have heard, amid the watches of 
the night, from that meek sufferer. There, when all his companions 
in study were locked in slumber, he was compelled to cry out, mild 
and genial as was his nature, “ Save me, O God; for the waters are 
come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no stand¬ 
ing ; I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I 
am weary of my crying; my throat is dried; mine eyes fail while I 
wait for my God.” He did not speak of his griefs, as he never loved 
to expose his inner life, but they afterward gave a peculiar tinge to 
his aspect and mien. That look of self-abasement, those semitones 
of subdued grief, that retiring, shrinking attitude before strangers, 
that deferential treatment of other men known to be his inferiors, 
that quick sympathy with all who were unrighteously oppressed or 
despised, that promptness to relieve the sorrows of the poor and 
forsaken, these and such as these winning traits in our brother, were 
mementos of the sad discipline which he had undergone, while 
combining study with business. In some degree these traits were 
natural to him, but his inward affliction revealed while it purified 
his nature. One sentiment of penitence and self-distrust seems to 


12 


have formed his manners, and moulded the very features of his 
countenance. 

It was an interesting trait in the character of our friend, that he 
was hopeful in regard to himself in all his relations, except those of 
a probationer for eternity; and even while mourning over his own 
religious prospects, he was enthusiastic in the service of other men. 
During the very months of his spiritual darkness, he wrote with 
buoyancy of hope for the Education Society, with which he was 
grieved to regard himself as altogether unfit to be connected. Ilis 
labors were said by his fellow Secretary, Mr. Cornelius, to be “indis¬ 
pensable for the Society.” Whenever he attempted to release him¬ 
self from them, he was assured by the Directors, that the cause of 
eleemosynary education would suffer without his counsels and perti¬ 
nacious diligence. At that period the Society was in the hey-day of 
its triumph. Our friend writes of sixty thousand dollars collected 
within two months, of eighty new beneficiaries received, and a hundred 
new applicants expected at a single quarterly meeting. He looks 
forward to the day when he shall be called to provide for two thou¬ 
sand scholars, destined to preach the word of life to two million souls. 
Mr. Cornelius, he writes, “will not be satisfied till-the Education 
Society has four thousand students under its patronage, and the Gos¬ 
pel of Christ is published unto the ends of the earth.” 

But the bounding spirit of Mr. Cornelius was soon transferred 
from the cause of ministerial education. In 1832 he died, and Mr. 
Edwards, inconsolable for his loss, wrote a careful memoir of him, in 
1833. The churches of our land had become involved in financial 
embarrassments, and the Society shared in the common disaster. 
Still, having loved that Society at the first, our brother, always con¬ 
stant in his attachments, loved it unto the end. He stood true to it 
and firm in its defence, when some of his friends forsook or assailed 
it. And the last years of his life, when he needed cheerfulness and 
repose, were often harassed with anxiety for the cause which he be¬ 
lieved to be essential for the growth of our churches. He remained 
a Secretary of the Society until May, 1833. In 1850, he was chosen 
one of its Directors, and continued such until all his labors on earth 
ceased. 

It was as an Editor, as well as Secretary, that Mr. Edwards first 
made an impression upon the community at large. While in the 
tutorship at Amherst College, he had in part the editorial care of a 
weekly journal, called the New England Inquirer. He devoted about 


13 


one third of his time to the religious and poetical departments of that 
paper. He was afterwards occasionally employed in superintending 
the Boston Recorder. From the autumn of 1828 until the spring of 
1842, he retained his editorial connection with the Quarterly Register 
and Journal of the Americal Education Society. The plan of the 
work in its most important features was his, as was also the spirit in 
which it was conducted. He designed to make it a great store-house 
of facts for the present and future generations. It gave a new impulse 
to statistical inquiries in our land. It contains indispensable mate¬ 
rials for our future ecclesiastical history. Those elaborate descrip¬ 
tions and tabular views of the academies, colleges, professional schools, 
public libraries, eleemosynary associations in this country and in 
Europe; those historical and chronological narratives of parishes, 
states, kingdoms, sects, eminent men, philanthropic schemes; those 
calm and trustworthy notices of our current literature; those choice 
selections and chaste essays were, in great part, either prepared by 
himself, or at his suggestion, or revised by his discriminating eye. 
In his superintendence of those fourteen, and more especially of the 
first ten octavo volumes, so much more useful to others than the care 
of them could have been to himself, he had melancholy occasion to 
say, Aliis in serviendo consumor. We cannot repress a sigh, when 
we read in his modest, familiar letters: “I have spent six hours to¬ 
day in correcting one page of a proof-sheetand again: “ After the 
rest of the Sabbath, my wrist troubles me less, it having been some¬ 
what inflamed by the incessant writing of the last two or three weeks 
and still again, as early as 1835 : “ I have written eight hours to-day, 
— four sheets of literary notices. I feel something wrong in my side, 
I suppose on account of my position in writing.” For all these toils 
in accumulating the materials for this Journal, he received no ade¬ 
quate recompense. They were, in great part, labors of love. 

While making his tours of observation among our colleges and 
theological schools, Mr. Edwards became satisfied that more effort 
must be made for the mental and moral culture of our pastors, as 
well as ministerial candidates. He desired to foster the continued in¬ 
terest of our clergy in all good learning, by opening an avenue through 
which they might communicate their thoughts to the world. It was 
partly for the purpose of calling out their hidden energies, that he 
established, in July, 1833, the American Quarterly Observer. He 
continued this periodical three years, when it was united with the 
Biblical Repository, which had been during the four preceding years 
conducted by Prof. Robinson at Andover. He remained sole editor 
2 * 


14 


of these combined periodicals, from January, 1835, to January, 1838. 
Six years after he withdrew from the Repository, he became the 
principal editor of the Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review; 
and, with the exception of two years, he had the chief care of this 
work from 1844 to 1852. In the year 1851, the Biblical Repository 
was transferred from New York to Andover, and united with the 
Bibliotheca Sacra; so that this veteran editor was entrusted the second 
time with that Review, which he had already done much to sustain 
and adorn. For twenty-three years he was employed in superin¬ 
tending our periodical literature; and, with the aid of several asso¬ 
ciates, he has left thirty-one octavo volumes as the monuments of his 
enterprise and industry in this onerous department. What man, liv¬ 
ing or dead, has ever expended so much labor upon our higher Quar¬ 
terlies ? — A labor how severe ! and equally thankless. 

lie combined facility of execution with great painstaking and care¬ 
fulness. He often compressed into a few brief sentences, the results 
of an extended and a prolonged research. In order to prepare him¬ 
self for writing two or three paragraphs on geology, he has been 
known to read an entire and elaborate treatise on that science. Ilis 
industry surprised men; for while he had two periodicals under his 
editorial care, he was often engaged in superintending the American 
reprints of English works. Besides attending to the proofsheets of 
his own Quarterlies, he would sometimes correct more than a hun¬ 
dred pages every week, of the proofsheets of other volumes, and 
would often compose for them prefatory or explanatory notes. And 
amid all the drudgery of these labors for the press, his rule was, 
never to let a day pass by, without refreshing his taste with the peru¬ 
sal of some lines from a favorite poet, such as Virgil or Spenser. 

It was his patriotic aim in his various periodicals, to encourage a 
national literature, to guard the reputation and elicit the talent of 
American authors, to lay the treasures of British, German and French 
learning at the feet of his own countrymen, and stimulate them in 
this way to a more vigorous and independent activity. His belief 
was, that the light of other nations would enkindle our own, and that 
we should become the more versatile, and even the more original, by 
the quickening influences of transatlantic mind. 

It was also his aim, especially in the Quarterly Observer, to com¬ 
bine the good men and true of all evangelical sects in one literary 
brotherhood, and to call forth their associated activity in aid of the 
great principles which were dear to them all. He therefore raised 
the Journal above sectarian influences, and concentrated upon it the 


15 


choice talent of varying parties. Ever was it his joy, to see the 
scattered rays of genius converge to one point. Some of his reviews 
were published amid the stir and the noise of ecclesiastical warfare; 
but how serene is the spirit of Christian science which beams forth 
from his pages! Who would ever suspect, that those catholic words 
were written for partisans agitated with the polemics of theology, 
and clamorous, often, against the divine who stood aloof from their 
strife. He knew the temptation of reviewers to gratify an envious 
spirit, and to malign men , under the pretence of opposing error. It 
was no feeble effort of our friend, to save his journals from the very 
appearance of a morose, querulous temper, and to keep out those per¬ 
sonal or sectional jealousies, which are the most baneful of heresies. 
To all reckless critics he has taught a wise lesson. Of the numerous 
authors whom he has reviewed, has a single one ever accused him of 
an unfair, an unscholarlike, an ungentlemanly criticism ? Once when 
he received an article exposing the grossest literary blunders of a 
divine whose faith he disapproved, he refused to publish the article, 
for the mere purpose of checking the tendency to assail the character 
of men, in order to supplant their doctrines. Again, he was impor¬ 
tuned to make a display of the literary plagiarisms which had been 
detected in a theological opponent. But so sensitive was he to the 
evils of personal strife, especially among divines, that he spared his 
foe at the risk of displeasing his friend. — I have used the word foe. 
I ought not to have used it. For the honor of our race, I would 
trust that he had no personal enemies; and if he had, — Father for¬ 
give them, for they know not what they have done, — if he had per¬ 
sonal enemies, they would have been safe in his hand. Probably ho 
never published a word against a man who had injured him. The 
reputation of others he looked upon as a sacred treasure. He studied 
that true dignity, which consists in sustaining a principle and forget¬ 
ting the persons of his antagonists. He had a passion for true and 
kindly words. Would God, that the mantle of this editor, as harm¬ 
less as he was wise, not less free from envy than from vanity, might 
fall upon every man who ventures upon the work, so hazardous to 
his own soul, of being a censor over his brethren! 

It was another favorite aim of Mr. Edwards, in his various period¬ 
icals, to combine learning and taste with true religion. As he re¬ 
coiled from an unsanctified literature, so he struggled for a higher 
good than unlettered pietism. He digged deep, that he might enrich 
his reviews with the costliest gems of beauty. His creed was, that a 
refined sensibility to the graceful and the noble gives opament and 


16 


and aid to virtue. He shrunk from all coarse and vulgar criticisms, 
as out of harmony with the genius of the Gospel; and he frowned 
upon every expression of irreverence and ungodliness, as at variance 
with the spirit of true philosophy. Hence his periodicals were wel¬ 
comed to libraries which had been wont to receive no books of cleri¬ 
cal aspect. He lamented, in his later years, that he had given so 
much of his time to our serial literature; but he did not know how 
much he had achieved thereby, in liberalizing the studies of good 
men, and in purifying the tastes of those who had previously no fellow¬ 
ship with the Gospel. Several features of his reviews have been 
copied not only by American, but also by European journals. He 
did not reflect, that he had found access to minds which would never 
have perused the more lengthened treatises of systematic theologians; 
that he,had insensibly stimulated authors to be more generous in their 
culture, more candid in their decisions, less flippant and unthoughtful 
in their words; that he had breathed the spirit of the peaceful Gos¬ 
pel into the hearts of men more belligerent than wise. If his thirty- 
one octavo volumes of periodical literature had been superintended 
by a man of indelicate taste and of confined learning and litigious 
spirit, how disastrous would have been their influence upon the com¬ 
fort of godly and discreet men ! 

It was as a Philanthropist , that Mr. Edwards began his editorial 
course. He never would have withdrawn his mind from classical 
learning to the statistics of schools and charitable funds, had not the 
same bosom which glowed with the love of letters, been warmed with 
a still more active zeal for the welfare of men. Animating the pages 
of his Reviews, is found the liveliest sympathy for the feeble, the 
troubled, the ignorant, the perverse. In his zeal to conduct well the 
correspondence of the Education Society, he attended a writing school 
when he was thirty years old, for the sake of improving his chirog- 
raphy, which before was good enough. He became so deeply inter¬ 
ested in the culture of the young, that in 1832 and 1835 he published 
two school-books, The Eclectic Reader, and an Introduction to the 
Eclectic Reader; both of them filled with the choicest selections from 
English and American literature, and both of them showing the fruits 
of his multifarious reading and delicate moral taste. He also pre¬ 
pared, but never printed, a series of questions on President Edwards’s 
History of Redemption, and designed them to be used in academies, 
as an aid to the recitation of that treatise. In 1832 he published his 
Biography of Self-taught Men, which was designed, as it was admi- 


17 


rably fitted, to wake lip the dormant powers of the youth who are 
most tempted to neglect them. While residing in Boston, he was one 
of the most enterprising members of Pine Street Church; he was 
enthusiastic in teaching its Sabbath School. He wrote and published, 
in 1835, for his own adult class, a small volume on the Epistle to the 
Galatians, and he assisted in preparing several other books for Sab¬ 
bath School instruction. His labors for Amherst College, during its 
infantile sufferings, were earnest and faithful. In 1845, he was soli¬ 
cited to become President of the Institution. In 1848, he was chosen 
one of its Trustees, and he fatigued himself in care and toil for its 
library, at a time when his health demanded entire rest. He loved 
his country; and while making the tour of Europe in 1846-7, he 
collected materials for a large (and it would have been a strikingly 
original) volume, which he was intending to publish, on the recipro¬ 
cal influences of the old world and the new, and the methods in which 
we may give as well as receive good, in our intercourse with trans¬ 
atlantic nations. It would have been an opportune treatise on moral 
intervention. 

Few persons have reflected more than he, on the Missionary enter¬ 
prise. For several months he examined the question, with an hon¬ 
est, self-sacrificing heart, whether it were his duty to spend his life, 
where he was entirely willing to spend it, among the heathen. He 
kept himself familiar with the details of missions established not only 
by the American Board, but by other Societies. In 1832, he pub¬ 
lished the Missionary Gazetteer, containing a succinct account of the 
various attempts made by all Christian sects to evangelize the world. 
With the hope of deepening the public sympathy for the heathen, he 
edited in 1831 the Life of Henry Martyn, prefixed to it an Introduc¬ 
tory Essay, and appended to it a series of notes, compiled, as the 
essay was written, after a most extensive research. The character 
of Henry Martyn was ever dear to him. He resembled that beloved 
man, in the refinement and generousness of his philanthropy. 

From the beginning to the end of his public life, he labored for the 
African race. The first pamphlet which he ever printed was a plea 
for the slave. While he was pursuing his theological studies, he 
heard that a colored youth had come hither to enjoy the privileges 
of the seminary. Some of his fellow-students had an instinctive reluc¬ 
tance to be in company with the stranger, but our self-denying friend, 
sensitive as he was to the ridicule of men, shrinking from all appear¬ 
ance of eccentricity, scrupulous in his regard to all the rules of neat¬ 
ness and refinement and seemliness, invited the sable youth to reside 


18 


in the same room with him. For several weeks this man, so digni¬ 
fied, so delicate in his sensibilities, studied at the same table with the 
poor African. This was the man! What would he not do for his 
degraded fellow-sinners! Like his great Exemplar, he chose to suf¬ 
fer with and for the publican, rather than to sit in the halls of kings. 
In 1835, he aided in forming the American Union for the Relief and 
Improvement of the Colored Race. He was among the most zealous 
and persevering of all the members of this society. He wrote, pub¬ 
lished, lectured, and gave liberally, too liberally, in its behalf. Hi3 
great aim was to elevate that race, so as to make it respected, instead 
of merely pitied. For twenty-six years, he was an unwavering friend 
of the Colonization Society, in its reverses as well as in its triumphs. 
He prayed for it. He toiled for it. He meditated plans for it. He 
suffered for it. He was willing to suffer more. The Secretary of 
the Massachusetts Colonization Society writes: “ I do not know how 
this society could have been kept alive, for two or three of its first 
years, but for the aid of Mr. Edwards.” He was one of its Board of 
Managers, from its foundation in 1841, until 1845, and was one of its 
Vice Presidents during the last seven years of his life. No man had 
a more intense aversion than he, to the system of slavery. He had 
seen its evils. He had felt them. He bore his last pain among them. 
He sighed at the very thought of an innocent man in chains. His 
spirit was burdened within him, by every new wrong inflicted on a 
race already bleeding. In his very make, he was a lover of freedom. 
By his dearest instincts, he recoiled from every form of injustice and 
harshness. But he restrained the expression of his feelings, when¬ 
ever the expression seemed to threaten harm. He guarded his tongue 
with bit and bridle, wherever he feared that his warm sensibilities 
would rush out in words tending to irritate more than reform his 
opposers. And as he disciplined himself to be meek and forbearing 
toward the friends of slavery, so he fostered a patient spirit toward 
those of its enemies who passed the bounds of what he deemed a safe 
discretion. He knew, in the depths of his soul, how to sympathize 
with their abhorrence of the unrighteous bondage, but he knew that 
undiscriminating rebuke might aggravate the ills which it was in¬ 
tended to heal, and he studied on this subject, more than almost any 
other, to adopt wise as well as efficient methods for removing the 
evil under which he groaned. 

The whole truth is, that our brother loved man as man; and noth¬ 
ing that touched the welfare of one of the least among his fellow- 
sufferers, was alien from him. Not a few of us can remember how 


19 


he spoke, — it was in the strains of a second Cowper, — when the 
Choctaws and Cherokees were compelled to leave the graves of their 
fathers; how he sighed, as if he had been personally bereaved, at the 
ravages of the Seminole war; how indignantly, — for his gentle spirit 
would rouse itself at fitting times, — he spoke in this pulpit, against 
the British invasion of China; how deeply and personally grieved 
he ever felt at the reports of disasters by land or sea; how carefully 
he studied to assuage the griefs or fears of the widow and the orphan; 
how faithfully he taught German to a servant in his house; how 
thoughtful he was to search out the sick student, to provide raiment 
for the young men who were poorly clad, and to take such as were 
desponding to his own home, and attend to their good cheer. So did 
he live, — and how rare for a man to live so, that we feel even now 
the rich meaning of the sentence which will one day be uttered be¬ 
fore him: “ I was an hungred and ye gave me meat; thirsty, and 
ye gave me drink; sick, and ye visited me; in prison, and ye came 
unto me.” 

As a Preacher, Mr. Edwards next appeared before the churches. 
During his first Senior term at Andover, he writes to his father: 
“ Our class will, I suppose, preach in vacation. I think I shall not. 
I cannot do it conscientiously, and no one would advise me to do it 
against my conscience.” Again he writes : “ As I am borne on to¬ 
wards the Christian ministry, I shrink back almost with terror. It 
sometimes seems to me, that I shall be upheld till I reach the sum¬ 
mit, only to fall the lower.” Still again: “ My heart and my con¬ 
science fail, when I look forward to such a work [as the ministerial]. 
If I take it upon me, I do not know but that it will be said: Better 
for that man if he had not been born.” 

Under the inspiriting influence of Mr. Cornelius, however, our 
friend was persuaded in 1831 to enter the pulpit. lie often regretted 
afterward, that he had ever done so.. “ It is,” he writes, “ a dreadful 
thought to me, very often, that God is more displeased with me for 
my prayers than for anything else; they are so heartless and hypo* 
critical.” 

His excessive diffidence in the pulpit arose, not altogether from 
his severe introspection of his own heart, but in some degree also, 
from his want of certain gifts for public address. His voice was not 
commanding; his gestures were not graceful; his attitudes not easy* 
He was near-sighted, and compelled to lean his head over and near 
his manuscript. Still, in a small house, or before a learned audience, 


20 


liis outward manner, though wanting in some of the graces, was 
singularly winning. Few men in this Chapel have ever equalled 
him, in holding their auditory spell-bound. He spoke with a cautious 
accent and a guarded emphasis, which betokened the selectness of his 
thoughts. He recited passages from the Bible, with such a glowing 
countenance and marked inflection, as gave a living commentary on 
the text. There was frequently a plaintiveness in his tones, that 
harmonized well with the sentiment breathed forth in them. Some 
of his attitudes in the pulpit would furnish a sculptor with a good 
model of self-distrust and self-abasement. In his lowly way, he ex¬ 
pressed a reverence and an awe of God, which must have come from 
a heart broken under a sense of guilt. When he raised his frame 
from its inclined position over his manuscript, and when for a moment 
he stood erect and gazed so honestly and earnestly at his hearers, 
he drew them to him as to a friend in whom they might confide, and 
whose sympathies were ever with his Redeemer and with all good 
men. Then there was a classic purity in his style, which fascinated 
the hearers who were trained to discern it. Then there were the 
terse, sententious, apothegmatic utterances, which startled and de¬ 
lighted the men who were able to understand them. He did not 
care so much about the logical form of his discourses, as about their 
inmost heart. They were free from common-places; and had a 
luxuriance of thought and feeling, which reminded one of trees with 
their branches bending and breaking under their fruit. They were 
not so remarkable for an obvious unity, as for a pathos that swelled 
through them, or vein of sentiment original, delicate, graceful, 
intangible, enchanting. Our brother had the artlessness of George 
Herbert, whom he loved so tenderly. His simple-hearted suggestions 
reminded one of the “ meek Walton,” to whom he had a rare likeness. 
Where he was known, he gained the ear of his auditors by their 
reverence for his general character, so congruous with the preacher’s 
calling, and also by their sympathy with his interest in all parts of 
Divine worship. They perceived his studious care in selecting and 
in reading the hymns, or rather the psalms, which were his favorite 
lyrics. He sometimes was so earnest as to specify the tunes in which 
his select stanzas were to be sung. He had formed the plan of col¬ 
lecting and publishing two or three hundred of the most exquisite 
songs of Zion, for those worshippers who loved to offer praise in rich 
words full of choice sentiment. 

One might infer from the native sweetness of his temper, that he 
would be refined in his treatment of men who had no spiritual interest 


21 


in the truths which he dispensed. While a theological student he 
writes: “ I would preach the law in all its strictness and spirituality, 
and terrible denunciations, but only to lead men to fly to the city of 
refuge ariU after noticing a volume of sermons which had begun to 
receive the applause of his brethren, he says: “ I cannot help think¬ 
ing that there is an unfeeling and vindictive spirit in these discourses. 
If I am not mistaken, they will drive the sinner to rage and mutiny, 
sooner than to self-condemnation. By these sermons, I should think 
their author lived when Agag and Ahitophel, Ahab and Jezebel 
were enemies to the church, rather than under the Gospel of mercy.” 

He was of so contemplative a habit, and his general intercourse 
with men was so courteous and deferential, that he was less inclined 
to make a direct and impetuous onset upon the feelings, than to pre¬ 
sent before them a faithful and vivid delineation of biblical truth. 
Here, as elsewhere, his private character disclosed itself in his public 
labors. He was pungent and severe and uncompromising in his ap¬ 
plication of the law to himself, but he deemed it wise to address other 
men in a general rather than personal, in an instructive rather than 
hortatory way. He may have been too exclusive in his preference 
for the didactic style; but it was a preference founded on mature 
consideration. Long before he entered the pulpit, he wrote: “You 
must have noticed, that truth presented in an indirect manner is more 
touching than when presented in the way of direct assertion and ad¬ 
vice. For instance, it has a much more powerful effect in exciting 
me to duty, to hear a preacher describe particularly the love of Christ, 
giving minute instances of it, than to exhort me to awake, or to pre¬ 
sent to me the most pointed appeals. When I was living in entire 
forgetfulness of God, I was not half so much convinced of the reality 
of religion by the pathetic exhortations in the letters of my friends, 
as from some occasional and altogether incidental remarks of my 
father. It seems to me, here is a field for doing good that is in a 
great measure unexplored. In writing a letter to an unconverted 
friend, it seems to me that it will be much more effectual, as a gene¬ 
ral thing, to present two or three real instances of the value of reli¬ 
gion or the evils of wanting it, and to let him make the inference, 
than to warn or exhort. Also, when in company of a promiscuous 
kind, a Christian can relate an incident, or make a passing remark, 
more deep and lasting in its etfects than a formal conversation. If 
I am ever permitted to preach, I think I shall take this course as the 
general one.” 

The most conspicuous feature in the sermons of our friend) waa 

3 


* 


22 


the tenderness of sensibility which they developed in regard to the 
redemptive system. His tones of voice, his expression of counte¬ 
nance, the arrangement of his words, sdl changed as soon as he 
touched this theme. He felt, as few men have ever felt,* the worth 
and power of that grace by which the sensitive conscience is eased 
of its pains. The waves of trouble flowing from a sense of guilt had 
rolled over him, and he had found a shelter behind the rock that was 
higher than he. He had heard the deep call unto the deep, and his 
soul would have been swallowed up amid the surges that threatened 
him, had not the voice of his Redeemer cried to the waves : “ Peace, 
be still.” His discourses were a sign of his breathing a higher and 
purer atmosphere than that of the world; of his intense personal sym¬ 
pathy with the Man of Sorrows ; of his living in Christ, while Christ 
abode in him; of his being himself offended with all that could dis¬ 
please the Head of the church, as our sympathizing Head is offended 
with all that disturbs the peace of his members, even of the little ones 
that abide in Him. 

And if our friend may be thus described as a preacher, how shall we 
speak of him as a hearer of the Gospel ? He seemed to keep up an 
incessant dialogue with the minister to whom he listened. Was there 
ever a man who expressed a livelier sympathy with the truths which 
he heard ? He could not endure to sit in the vicinity of hearers, who* 
did not feel as he felt toward the preacher. He has been seen to leave 
his appropriate seat among his companions in middle life, who, as he 
feared, would dislike a sermon from which he anticipated pleasure, 
and to take a seat among young men, who, as he foresaw, would share 
in his delight. A few years ago, in attempting to recapitulate the 
substance of a discourse which he had recently heard, on the riches 
of atoning love, his emotions checked his utterance, and he could not 
proceed in rehearsing even the schedule of the sermon. Such in¬ 
stances were common in his life. Have not all his friends discerned 
the smile playing on his lips, at the gracious words which came from 
the pulpit; or the tear which suffused his eye at every tender senti¬ 
ment which was uttered; or the frown and hanging head which be¬ 
tokened that he had heard a phrase tending to dishonor his Maker; or 
the turning of his countenance this way and that way, to catch the 
sympathies which seemed to be floating around him? And who, 
that has ever seen the light and shade of sentiment thus alternating 
over his visage and attitude, has not felt that a spirit so delicate and 
sensitive was not formed for a lengthened sojourn in a tabernacle of 
flesh and blood ? It is a sad reminiscence,' that during the last two 


23 


years of his worship in this Chapel, he has perhaps never heard an 
allusion to the grave and to bereavement, without casting a pitiful 
eye to those who might soon be clothed in weeds at the side of his 
own burial-place. 

• 

Immediately after leaving the Theological Seminary, Mr. Edwards 
removed from Andover to Boston, and remained in that metropolis 
from the autumn of 1830 until the spring of 1836. lie then trans¬ 
ferred his residence to Andover, and in the autumn of 1837 was 
appointed Professor of the Hebrew language in the Seminary. At 
the resignation of Mr. Stuart, he was elected, in 1848, to the chair 
of Biblical Literature, which devolved upon him instruction in the 
Greek as well as the Hebrew Bible. As a biblical teacher, he spent 
the last fifteen years, the most valuable period of his life. As a 
Biblical Teacher, therefore, he deserves to be noticed at this time. 

We are first reminded of the great labor which he spent upon the 
sacred text, and of his exertions to qualify himself for teaching it. 
His earliest studies were biblical. He had read the Bible through 
seven times, and all of Dr. Scott’s Notes twice, before he was eleven 
years old. He began the Hebrew language at the age of twenty- 
two, and pursued it regularly, almost daily, as long as he lived. 
He had studied the old Saxon tongue, chiefly for the purpose of 
being able to appreciate more correctly the merits of our English 
Bible. Through life it was his rule, to peruse no book which would 
impair his taste for the sacred volume. During his editorial career, 
he had corrected proofsheets of Hebrew and also of Greek works 
then in press, and had submitted to this drudgery, — alas! how much 
of literary drudgery did he not perform! — for the sake of familiar¬ 
izing himself with the minutiae of the sacred languages. In order 
to gain a more thorough mastery of the Hebrew idioms, he began, in 
1839, the study of the Arabic, and in subsequent years, the study of 
other cognate languages. If we will but examine his essays in the 
Reviews which he edited, and the volumes which he was engaged in 
publishing during the last fifteen years, we shall see that they all 
indicate his design (for he was eminent for acting on a plan matured 
with forethought), to qualify himself more and more for expounding 
the original Scriptures. Thus, in 1839, he aided in translating a 
volume of Selections from German Literature; and his chief design 
in preparing this work was, to familiarize himself with the German 
tongue, that key to the biblical literature of the world, that instru¬ 
mental tongue without which no one, at the present day, will be an 


V 


24 

adept in sacred learning. In 1843, he united with Professors Sears 
and Felton in publishing the “ Classical Studies.” But his ultimate 
aim in this work was, to imbibe more deeply the spirit of the old 
Greek and Roman authors, to refine his taste for elegant letters, and 
thus to t^t himself for worthier comments on the inspired page. He 
was associated, in 1844, with Mr. Samuel H. Taylor, in translating 
the larger Greek Grammar of Dr. Ktihner. He deemed this a wise 
discipline for acquiring a minute acquaintance with the structure and 
genius of the Greek language, and for capacitating himself thereby 
to examine the New Testament more profoundly. All these studies 
he made tributary to his one comprehensive aim. They were not 
miscellaneous in the sense of planless, but were the wide-reaching 
efforts of an enterprising, concentrative mind. 

And when, in 1846 and 1847, he made the tour of Europe for his 
health, he did not forget his one idea. He revelled amid the trea¬ 
sures of the Bodleian Library, and the Royal Library at Paris; he 
sat as a learner at the feet of Montgomery, Wordsworth, Chalmers, 
Messofanti, Neander, the Geological Society of London and the 
Oriental Society of Prussia, and he bore away from all these scenes 
new helps for his own comprehensive science. He gleaned illustra¬ 
tions of Divine truth, like Alpine flowers, along the borders of the 
Mer de Glace, and by the banks of “ the troubled Arve,” and at the 
foot of the Jungfrau. He drew pencil sketches of the battle-field at 
Waterloo, of Niebuhr’s monument at Bonn, and of the cemetery 
where he surmised that he may have found the burial-place of John 
Calvin. He analyzed the causes of the impression made by the 
Rhine and the valley of Chamouni. He wrote tasteful criticisms on 
the works of Salvator Rosa, Correggio, Titian, Murillo, Vandyke, 
Canova, Thorwaldsen; he trembled before the Transfiguration by 
Raphael, and the Last Judgment by Michael Angelo; he was re¬ 
freshed with the Italian music, “ unwinding the very soul of har¬ 
mony;” he stood entranced before the colonnades and under the 
dome of St. Peter’s, and on the walls of the Colosseum by moonlight, 
and amid the statues of the Vatican by torchlight, and on the roof of 
the St. John Lateran at sunset, “ where,” he says, “ I beheld a pros¬ 
pect such as probably earth cannot elsewhere furnish;” he walked the 
Appian way, exclaiming: “On this identical road, — the old pave¬ 
ments now existing in many places, — on these fields, over these 
hills, down these rivers and bays, Horace, Virgil, Cicero, Marius 
and other distinguished Romans, walked, or wandered, or sailed. 
Here, also, apostles and martyrs once journeyed, or were led to their 


25 


scene of suffering. Over a part of this very road, there is no doubt 
that Paul travelled, when he went bound to Rome.” He wrote 
sketches of all these scenes; and in such a style as proves his inten¬ 
tion to regale his own mind with the remembrance of them, to adorn 
his lectures with descriptions of them, to enrich his commentaries 
with the images and the suggestions, which his chaste fancy had 
drawn from them. But, alas! all these fragments of thought now 
sleep, like the broken statues of the Parthenon, and where is the 
power of genius that can restore the full meaning of these lines, and 
call back their lost charms! Where is that more than Promethean 
fire, that can their light relume! 

The assiduity of Mr. Edwards in exploring so many sources of 
knowledge, enabled him to impart various instruction in a chaste, 
elegant style. His editorial labors had required of him a multifarious 
reading, and still had disciplined him to be scrupulously exact. In¬ 
deed, some have supposed him to be a mere sharp-sighted, punctilious, 
painstaking, wary chronicler of facts. His moral principles, also, 
made him correct in his studies. It was one of his favorite maxims, 
that a rigidly honest heart exerts a refiex influence upon the mental 
habits. In his cqpversation he cherished a delicate regard to truth, 
so that he might be incited to new carefulness in his professional 
inquiries; and as he was exact in his life, in order to become the 
more exact in his study, so he was cautious as a scholar, in order to 
become the more exemplary in his life. His dress, room, manners, 
evinced his love of neatness, and his taste for just thought and fit 
words. Writing far more than the majority of scholars, he still wrote 
with a degree of painstaking, which men who do not sympathize with 
his love for the precise truth, would think unworthy of him. He 
conformed to the principle, which he has often reiterated, that “after 
fill which may be said respecting unstudied nature, the outbreaking 
of natural eloquence, the happy disregard of rule and formality, of 
which we so frequently hear, it is yet refreshing and instructive be¬ 
yond expression, to listen to well-composed sentences, which have 
been subjected to the revision of a severely disciplined mind.” 1 His 
style became so well-adjusted, so affluent in thought, that Professor 
Stuart pronounced it to be “just about perfect for a commentary.” 
But with all his nice care, he combined a singular beauty. His fine 
taste for nature and art, gave every day the most promising first- 
fruits of a rich harvest, to be gleaned from his future labors. Other 


1 American Quarterly Register, Vol. IX p. 13. 

3 * 



26 


men have broken up the fallow ground and have levelled the waste 
places, and have fought with beasts at Ephesus ; but our friend had 
a rare fondness and an almost instinctive aptitude for detecting the 
latent beauties of the Bible, for setting in a good light its numberless 
minor graces, for clothing its loftier thoughts with their own befitting 
majesty. Here was to have been his excelling power as a commen¬ 
tator. His biblical notes are now like a garden of fruits just budding 
into life. His classes hung upon his words uttered with a lowly 
accent, and will now labor to fill out the etchings which were drawn 
for them by his breathing pencil. He had not the masculine tones, 
the strong, impetuous, overpowering utterance of Mr. Stuart; he did 
not compel the attention of the indolent, and force men to hear when 
they would forbear; but he insinuated his thought into the love of his 
pupils, and he wound their affections around him with silken bands. 

He had another excellence as a teacher. It was his sympathy 
with the truths and characters delineated in the Bible. He was, 
indeed, familiar with the geography and archaeology of the Scrip¬ 
tures. He could have threaded his way through the lanes of Jeru¬ 
salem, as easily as through the streets of Boston, and he did not know 
the windings of the roads in his own New England, better than he knew 
the paths along the hills and valleys of Judaea, I But he was not so 
eminent for his knowledge of the outward circumstances in which the 
patriarchs, prophets and apostles lived, as for his cordial fellowship 
with their inmost life. His home was in the heart of the sacred pen¬ 
men, amid their tenderest sentiments. He brought the enthusiasm of 
a poet to the study of the volume, so large a part of which is written in 
poetry. Abraham was a father to him, as to the faithful of old. He 
looked up to Moses with a reverence like that of the ancient tribes, 
lie lingered over the Psalms of David, as if he could never let them 
pass out of his sight. When he perused them in course for the last 
time at family prayer, he could “not afford to read many verses on 
any single daythey were so precious that he dreaded to reach the 
end; and the few lines which he regaled himself with in the morn¬ 
ing, were his refreshment until the glad return of his hour for house¬ 
hold devotion. Few men had ever a clearer insight into the book of 
Job than he, or a deeper sympathy with the emotions that swelled the 
bosom of the old patriarch. And, had he lived to finish the commen¬ 
taries which he had begun on this book and on the book of the Psalms, 
he would have uncovered new gems of sentiment, and bequeathed un¬ 
told treasures to a late posterity. Not his lips only, but his entire 
frame would sometimes quiver with feeling, as he explained before his 


27 


pupils a sentiment of the old prophets. Were it not for his reverence 
for the inspired penmen, we should say that he had a fellow-feeling 
with them, and this quickened his eye to discern the shades of ex¬ 
pression too faint for the notice of cold, verbal critics. He felt the 
philosophy which lies hidden under the poetic forms of the Bible. 
Ilis taste for the inspired beauties was like a magnet attracting them 
to itself. To him the sacred words were written in illuminated letters. 
He enjoyed the delicate graces imperceptible to heartless inquirers. 
His was an elect mind. 

The merits of a teacher do not lie entirely in his general character. 
He needs a particular interest in the school which he instructs. 
While a tutor in Amherst College, Mr. Edwards identified himself 
with it. During the fifteen years of his residence at Andover, he 
loved this Seminary with an intenseness which wasted his frame. It 
was his terrestrial Zion. His joy was to go round about her, telling 
her towers and marking well her bulwarks. Before her gates he 
scattered the flowers of his various learning, and at her altars, with 
a grateful heart, he threw down the laurels with which a world had 
crowned him. No arrow that was hurled at her could ever reach 
her, without first passing through his own soul. He will not be re¬ 
membered here as fully as he would have been, if a mysterious Provi¬ 
dence had not broken him off from his labors. But his memory will 
wave before distant generations of students, as the memory of that 
disciple whom Jesus loved. They will walk with a tender interest 
around the classic stone that is to mark his resting place. They will 
write and speak of the star that rose mildly in the east, and attracted 
the gaze of distant observers, and men were turning their glasses to 
it, and watching its upward progress, when it vanished out of their 
sight. 

Shall 1 speak of our friend as a Theologian ? I have hesitated 
long, before consenting to associate his name with a word which has 
come to be regarded as a symbol for wrangling and logomachy; for 
dry, fruitless theories, marring the simplicity of the Gospel, confusing, 
and therefore exasperating the very men who strive for them. His 
soul turned away from ecclesiastical pugilism. He never descended 
into the ambitious and envious quarrel about the shibboleths of a 
party. He never soiled his white raiment in those contests for per¬ 
sonal or sectional preeminence, which have been so often waged over 
the interminable jargon of scholastic metaphysics, misnamed divinity. 
Men have not been wont to speak of him as a theologian. They 


28 


have called him a student of the Bible. They have talked about him 
as a pure-minded inquirer for the truth. They have termed him an 
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile. They have spoken of him as 
that disciple whom Jesus loved. But as a technical theologian he has 
been named so seldom, that perhaps I shall disturb the sacred asso¬ 
ciations that cluster around his memory, if I allude to him in this 
sphere of his labor. 

But he was a theologian, in the best sense of that abused word. 
He was versed in the science of the great God, and this science is 
theology, and it is the noblest of all sciences. He was a divine . As 
a logician, he may have had no signal preeminence, although he was 
familiar with the books and the rules of dialectics, nor did he under¬ 
value them. When he left his home for the last time, he took with 
him the Port Royal Logic, for his entertainment amid the scenes 
where he was to close his studies on earth. But he was a biblical, 
if not peculiarly a logical divine. He explained the Scriptures ac¬ 
cording to the canons of a sound, strong, plain common-sense. He 
w r as remarkable for his cautious, discreet, circumspect analysis of the 
text, his patient waiting before he made up a judgment, his humble 
inquiry, — and the good Spirit promises to show the truth to a lowly 
seeker, — his readiness to discern and to shun the absurdities, which 
a spurious logic derives from the letter, rather than from the mean¬ 
ing of the inspired words. He had the rare merit of taking his faith 
from the general import of the Bible, rather than from a few of its 
detached, “ picked phrases.’’ He had a large comprehension of its 
main scope, and he watched its decided drift, and was candid, — for 
he prized candor as among the chief, and perhaps the very hardest 
of a scholar’s virtues, — and w^as conscientious,— it was indeed his 
daily prayer that he might have a pure, sensitive conscience, — in 
treating the 5ible as a consistent whole, instead of seizing at a few 
of its terms, and wresting them from their adjuncts, and despoiling 
them of their simple, wholesome sense. It was the distinction of his 
creed, as he affirmed it to be the glory of Protestantism, that “ it has 
no favorite chapter and verses; it stands or falls on the spirit of the 
entire volume, on the widest induction of particulars, on the consen¬ 
taneous support of all the sacred writers, and of all which they de¬ 
clare. It pretends to no darling Apostle, to no artfully culled sym¬ 
bols; it shrinks from no argument, is afraid of no catechizing, never 
arrays faith against reason, and relies” on a broad, common-sense 
interpretation of the Bible. 1 


1 Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. V. p. 621. 




29 


As our friend was a biblical, so was he a practical divine. It was 
common to speak of him as an intellectual man. He was such, but 
a man of feeling, likewise. He was led into the truth by his expe¬ 
rience of its power. He did reason concerning it, but with the help 
of his instincts and his Christian sympathies. He did not learn the 
native character of man by abstruse inference, or by observation of 
his neighbors; but while he confesses his unfitness “for standing at 
the door and introducing others to the momentous work of preaching 
the Gospel,” he adds: “ Of whatever else I am ignorant, I do most 
fully believe the utter and enormous depravity of the human heart, 
and the absolute necessity of Almighty grace to subdue it; and what¬ 
ever else I neglect to preach, if ever I am permitted to preach, I 
shall endeavor not to neglect Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The 
divinity of the Saviour, also, he did not learn from a merely gram¬ 
matical comment on the letter of the Bible; but his own deep grief 
gave emphasis to that letter, and he interrupts his expressions of de¬ 
spair in himself, by exclaiming: “If there is one ray of hope, which 
ever visits the darkness of my soul, it is when I think of the Saviour 
as Almighty, and ever present to hear and to help.” 

Having learned the truth in this impressive way, it was natural 
that he should be a kind-hearted, generous divine. Bigotry and in¬ 
tolerance come of a spirit that knows not its own frailty. Those 
great facts of the evangelical scheme, which are made so prominent 
and so lovely in the Divine word as to draw all men unto them, he 
prized as the substance of the Gospel. And if men believed those 
great facts with the heart and from the heart, he bore their philoso¬ 
phical errors with a serene indulgence. Was he too catholic? That 
were an ungracious criticism, — but he was more liberal and kindly 
in his estimate of others, more lenient toward their mistakes, and 
more hopeful of their improvement, than any man whom I have ever 
known in our uneasy and uncomfortable race. He felt that he had 
enough to do in mourning over his own foibles, without wasting his 
probation in exposing the faults of his fellow-men. How sadly shall 
we need his mild counsels, when we gird on our armor and go out to 
meet a challenge of the Philistines. How sorrowful shall we be, 
when we come back from the dust and clamor of the warfare, that 
we shall no more be greeted by his words of peace and sweet charity. 
Were there ten such men as he among our#divines, then would the 
churches have rest. 

Let it not be inferred that, because he was tolerant of unessential 
error, he therefore had no fixed belief in unessential truth. He had 


30 


his predilections for one sect, unworthy as this assertion may sound 
of his expansive sympathies. He delighted to reflect on himself as 
belonging to the same church with Clement and Jerome and Augus¬ 
tine and Chrysostom and Bernard, and Pascal and Fenelon, and Lu¬ 
ther and Zinzendorf, and Leighton and Heber, and John Foster and 
Robert Hall, and Whitefield and the Wesleys; and he loved his own 
denomination, because it fitted him to fraternize with all good men 
and to call them all his own. He was among the very straitest and 
most unyielding of his sect, — if I may use that sharp and narrow 
word, — because its genius is, to leave the inquirer free and untram¬ 
melled ; and still, among his most cherished authors were such men 
as Wordsworth and Coleridge, — the very men who had the strongest 
repugnance to some of his own ecclesiastical partialities. Men think 
of him, and should think of him, as a large-hearted Christian, and 
may dislike to have him styled a Calvinist, rather than a Lutheran. 
I should not render him entire justice, if I should insinuate that he 
loved to make the severer features of Calvinism prominent in his in¬ 
tercourse with men. Still, in a peculiar degree, his life developed the 
true spirit of a Calvinistic divine; not the spirit which has been com¬ 
monly ascribed to the admirers of the Genevan creed; not the spirit 
which has been always harbored by them; but the spirit which is fos¬ 
tered by the reasonable and biblical expositions of that sublime faith. 
He looked up to Jehovah as a Sovereign, and trembled before him. 
He would not boast, nor be egotistical; for all his powers and attain¬ 
ments he traced up to the everlasting decree, to the love which planned 
them before the foundation of the world. He stood with awe at the 
foot of the throne, which, resting on its own strength, is firm, change¬ 
less, unmovable. He repeated with marked reverence the name of 
the great “ I Am.” He walked softly before the Monarch who elects 
one and abandons another. In the near prospect of seeing the Arbi¬ 
ter of his destinies face to face, he paused, and was thoughtful, and 
bowed his head, and his words were few. He was not dogmatical, — 
how could he be, if he valued his creed? — for he knew the littleness 
of his powers, and counted himself to have no more than an insect’s 
eye, and to be shut up to the vision of a mere, small surface; and 
can such a man utter assuming and presumptuous and overbearing 
words? He did not calumniate his brethren — could he do so, if he 
fostered a hearty trust in the doctrines which he professed? — for he 
had learned his own vileness, as well as that of his fellow-men, and 
he felt that both he and they deserved alike to be driven from before 
the Lord, as grains of chaff; — that instead of upbraiding his com- 


31 


panions in evil, he should beg, from his place in the dust: “ God be 
merciful to me a sinner.” He knew and he felt, that his heart was 
searched by the Ruler who killeth and who maketh alive, and that 
he was under the dominion of a Monarch who givetli no account of 
his matters to his servants, “ nor borrows leave to beand with these 
thoughts of his Judge, he was humble, and subdued, and still; he 
went to his grave, meditative and penitent, nor did he strive nor cry, 
nor was his voice heard in the streets; — and this is the true spirit 
of a Calvinistic divine. 

The honor which we pay to our friend is a peculiar one; for his 
excellence was more conspicuous in his private than in his public 
life. As a Scholar , he gained the profoundest respect from those 
who saw him in his every day walks. By the fact that he wrote or 
edited, alone or with coadjutors, forty-three volumes, and several 
pamphlets, the world have known that he was industrious. But the 
exposed fabric is often less interesting, than the secret machinery 
with which it was wrought. When we inspect the private habits of 
this student by nature, we see him absorbed in thought as he moves 
along the road-side, and he does not notice his most intimate com¬ 
panions, who may chance to meet him; or we see him on a journey 
in his chaise, and he is reading Wordsworth’s Excursion aloud to 
the friend at his side; or we see him at his family repasts, holding a 
conversation or a recitation in German or French or Latin; and jfll 
this is not a labor but a pleasure, and it is all smoothed with his 
quiet humor. His delight was in books. When he needed relaxa¬ 
tion, he would change the topics or the order of study, but study was 
like his breath itself, a vital function. After the labors of the day 
were closed, he appeared as ready as in the morning, to begin a new 
toil. In the time of his firm health, he seemed untiring. He was 
the scholar everywhere. Even his home-bred associations were with 
literary themes. He purchased a half-acre of land adjoining his 
house, partly for the sake of getting possession of an aged oak tree 
that grew on the land; for he had long desired to own such a tree; 
for the oaken wreath is rich with the memories of the old Greek and 
the Roman; and angels of the Lord came and sat under the oak, in 
the days of that Covenant People whom our brother loved; and 
many an elegiac sermon did he hope to write, under the shade of that 
venerable wood. 

As he was a man of multifarious reading, some might infer, that 
he did not keep himself familiar with the few select, standard authors, 


32 


and that he lost in definiteness as much as he gained in comprehen¬ 
sion. But he never allowed a year to pass, without disciplining his 
mind on the works of Pascal, Bishop Butler, John Foster and Robert 
Hall. He had the virtues of a man of one book. The poems of 
Homer he often carried with him in his pocket for his refreshment 
as he stopped by the wayside. When the near approach of death 
had taken away his power to read the volumes which he had carried 
from this place to his distant sick-room, and he had slowly consented 
to send back the volumes to their old shelves, he requested that his 
Homer might be spared him; for he still hoped to enliven some of 
his lingering hours with the winged words of his chosen bard. Be¬ 
cause he was a man of books, it might be surmised that he took only 
a stinted interest in the scenes of daily life. But he always seemed 
to have the latest news from the German Diet and the British Par¬ 
liament, and our National Congress and State Legislature, and our 
metropolis, and our tranquil village. The question has been often 
put by one class of his admirers: When does he find any time for the 
studies which we know that he pursues ? and by another class: When 
does he find any time for the general intelligence which we see that 
he amasses ? He was a man of quick and strong memory; and the 
adage is, that such a man fails in judgment; but perhaps our friend 
enjoyed a better name for his accurate judgment, than for his capa¬ 
cious memory, even. He had a passion for statistics, and a plain 
critic, who had wearied himself over some of the tables in the Quar¬ 
terly Register, pronounced its editor to be “ without a particle of 
imagination.” But to those who knew his love for the Greek poets, 
his reverence for their genius, his sympathy with their tenderest ex¬ 
pressions, it seemed amazing that he could ever have found a plea¬ 
sure in accumulating the driest details of local history. He was a 
Grecian, not only in his love of the beautiful, but also in his self- 
control ; yet by no means did he always attune his life to the Dorian 
mood. He wept over the pages of the tragedy; he lost his sleep 
over those historical realities which are often more harrowing than 
fiction. He was catholic toward the literary parties which differed 
from him; yet he felt a personal union with his favorite authors, 
and a tear would often suffuse his eye when he listened to ungene¬ 
rous criticisms upon Plato or Socrates. He felt such criticisms, as if 
made upon himself. 

A living enthusiasm for good letters was the soul of his literary 
enterprise. “ I feel sometimes an unaccountable desire,” he writes 
in one of his youthful epistles* “ to accomplish some things which 


33 


man has not attained; yet I consider it right to strive after a perfec¬ 
tion in literary pursuits, which is probably beyond my reach;” — 
this was the high aim ever animating and exalting his mind. It 
made him a man of progress. It gave him a fixed purpose, in re¬ 
liance on Heaven, to go on improving to his grave. He strove to 
perpetuate in his mind the fresh sympathies and aspirations of youth. 
He continued, even in his last hours, to cherish his early desire of 
conferring “great and endless blessings” on the learned world. The 
power of his character lay, somewhat, in these noble contrasts of en¬ 
thusiasm and discretion, delicate sensibility and sterling sense, lofty 
enterprise and meek wisdom. 

As a Christian , he was more admirable than as a scholar. Hi9 
religious feeling was mirrored forth in his literary essays. His life 
was a rich lesson, as it illustrated the power of Christian principle 
over the constitutional sensibilities. He was by nature so gentle, 
that he would sometimes be taken for a timid man; but when a re¬ 
ligious interest was assailed, he became bolder than his compeers. 
His amiable temper predisposed him to yield his own opinions and 
preferences to those of his associates; but if he suspected that the 
claims of learning or virtue would suffer, by one iota of change in 
any one of his plans, no man was more inflexible than he. Nothing 
could move him. He would sacrifice his comfort, or his health, or 
friends, — anything, everything, to the scheme which was demanded 
by his conscience. He would have been sure that he was right; he 
would have petitioned to Heaven for a sound opinion ; yet for a wor¬ 
thy end, he would have died a martyr. In these days his life has 
been a timely lesson, as it has illustrated the union between a literary 
enthusiasm and a depth of piety. He had theoretical arguments, but 
in himself he was a living argument, against the policy of dwarfing 
the intellect for the sake of nourishing the affections. His interest 
in the pliant language, the beautiful images, the nice distinctions, the 
wise maxims of the Greeks, prepared him to admire the higher sub¬ 
limity and the broader wisdom of the inspired Jews. The progres¬ 
sive delicacy of his taste quickened his zeal for Christian truth, of 
which all the beauties of earth are but types and shadows. His re¬ 
ligious progress is well delineated in those three words inscribed on 
Herder’s tomb-stone: “Light, Love, Life/’ For as he gained the 
more light, he caught the more glowing love; and as his love flamed 
out in a new ardor, he enjoyed the truer life. In the autumn of 
1837, he was bereaved of a child, his first-born. Often had he felt 
4 


34 


the chastisement of the Lord; but now it seemed to him, he said, 
“ as if the heart, the physical organ itself, would be moved out of its 
place*” For a twelvemonth, he could not apply his mind to tranquil 
and consecutive study. Just two months after the day of his bereave¬ 
ment, he was inaugurated a Professor in this Seminary. At the 
close of his Inaugural Address, he cast his mild eye toward that little 
grave, and uttered the modest words: “ The experience of almost 
every day warns us, that the fairest earthly hopes bloom only for the 
grave.” From that grave he learned his best lessons. He studied 
it daily, through life. In nearly all his sermons there is some word 
or phrase, which indicates that he was preparing to meet his absent 
child. He loved more and more to preach on the rewards of the 
blessed, and especially on the resurrection of the just; when, as he 
said, “ those little ones, millions of whom fell asleep in Christ’s dear 
arms, shall spring to new life in their Father’s house.” 

We shall do injustice to Mr. Edwards, as a scholar, unless we re¬ 
gard him as a Christian; and we shall fail to honor him aright either 
as a scholar or as a Christian, unless we consider him as a Man . 
He was a man. The qualities of a meek disciple underlay the 
excellence of the student; and the qualities of the man underlay the 
excellence of the student and Christian both. He acted and reacted 
upon himself in those varying capacities; his virtues in each relation 
blossomed out of his virtues in the other. There was a concinnity 
in him as a man ; yet he was versatile and generously endowed. He 
combined the varying physical temperaments, in an uncommonly 
unique system. The even tenor of his life was cheerful; but cer¬ 
tainly he was given to pensive and sombre moods. He had a kind 
of reverence for that melancholy which is so often the attendant of 
genius. He loved the poet Homer for speaking of “ tearful war.” 
He sometimes queried, whether there were not an intensity of mean¬ 
ing which we cannot fathom, in the phrase “pitying angels,” — 
whether the spirits of the blessed, those ministers of grace,'must not 
feel a tender and profound sorrow for human sin and woe. He was 
pliant in his intercourse, but on important themes he had a manlike 
tenacity of his opinions. How many have been overpowered by his 
modest ways! — but he yielded to no one in a just self-respect. He 
was honest, simple-hearted, but wise and far-seeing. The world did 
not know him. Like his blessed Lord, he passed through the crowds 
whom he served, and in his inner life was a stranger to them. There 
was a depth of feeling in him, and such a quiet self-possession 


35 


there was an energy of will in him, and such an accommodating tem¬ 
per; there was such a sensitiveness and yet so cool a judgment, 
that he baffled men who would fully analyze his worth. And here 
was the secret of his power over his associates. They trusted in him; 
they leaned upon him; they often yielded their opinion to his; for 
they revered the spirit which had a depth, a width, a variousness, a 
compass, an extent of information, not exactly intelligible to them. 
They did not deem him faultless, for he was too lowly to suffer such 
a mistake; but as they became more minute in observing his private 
life, so much the more did they confide in the purity and rectitude 
of his aims. 

And there was one sphere where he moved aloof from the gaze of 
men, and where he cultivated the virtues whose influence diffused 
itself silently through his public life. There was one temple, where 
he ministered as a high-priest of the God of Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob. There was one altar, where he bowed with a dignity and a 
grace which we are not to describe in this sad presence. Who shall 
tell of his serene walk through the chambers, that are now darkened 
because he is taken up from them! With what reverence did he 
bend over the cradle of his sleeping infants! In what phrases can we 
describe the veneration which he felt for the character of woman. 
Let us not venture behind the veil which hangs, with so sacred a 
beauty, before his domestic life. The words of a stranger are but 
unmeaning sounds, in the ear of those desolate ones who know more 
than even they can express. 

“ What practice howsoe’er expert 
In fitting aptest words to things, 

Or voice the richest-toned that sings, 

Hath power to give thee as thou wert?” 

As a man, our friend was mortal. That activity of mind which is 
a rest to him where he is now, overpowers the flesh and blood which 
cannot enter the kingdom of God. The seeds of consumption sprang 
up in his body, which had been leaning so long over the learned 
page. For seven years he was yielding, inch by inch, to that insid¬ 
ious disease. He could not be persuaded that he had any serious 
malady. He refuted the intimations of his friends, with a tranquil 
smile. He still cherished his plans for a long life. He persevered 
in cultivating such habits (for this was his singular forethought), as 
would make his old age benignant and attractive. He persisted in 
accumulating new materials for new commentaries. He was just 


36 


ready to finish for the press his Expositions of Habakkuk, Job, the 
Psalms, and the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Fifteen years had 
he spent in amassing the treasures for these works; now had come 
the time for putting the gems into their caskets. Sudden was his 
disappointment, when he heard, a year since, that his disease was 
beyond all cure. Still, having consumed the vigor of his life in 
bringing together from afar the stones of the temple, it was hard to 
give up the hope of rearing the sacred edifice. He repaired to Athens 
in Georgia, with the desire of pressing onward to their fulfilment his 
long cherished schemes. He could not endure the thought, that men 
should look at him as a doomed man, — should point at him with the 
finger of sympathy, as given over to the grave. He would fain keep 
his doom as a secret in his own breast. But while he was taciturn, 
death hurried on. He became too feeble for study. He was com¬ 
pelled to shut his books. This was a new rebuff to his enterprising 
mind. He seemed like a man bereaved of his children. He looked 
like one who was soon to die of a broken heart. His loftiest ideals, 
the most comprehensive scheme of his life waved before him in his 
last hours. His frame was attenuated; it was almost a shadow; but 
his mind continued, as it had been wont, to engross itself with great 
themes. Socrates would have referred to him as a sign and pledge 
of the soul’s immortal life and youth. On the Sabbath before he 
died, he asked that the doors of his room might be thrown wide open, 
so that he might see the fields glistening in the sunlight, and might 
inhale the fresh breeze of spring. He was enchanted with the vernal 
scene, with the boughs putting forth their tender leaves. His soul 
was alive with happy thoughts, all the happier because it was the 
Sabbath morning. He recited the words: 

“As when to them who sail 
Beyond the cape of Hope, and now are past 
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow 
Sabean odors from the spicy shore 
Of Arabie the blest,” — 

“ Take out Milton,” he added, “ and read that figure.” It was read. 

“ It is one of the grandest in the language,” he remarked, “ and an¬ 
other like it is in those lines: 

‘ Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, 

Stand dressed in living green.’ 

At one season of the year, the hills of Judaea may be distinctly noticed 
clothed in green, beyond the river.” And then he meditated on the 


37 


scenes beyond the river. It had been his hope, to spend that very 
season of the year in Palestine; but he was hastening onward to a 
holier land than Canaan of old, — fields greener than those which 
line the Jordan. After he had read the one hundred and fiftieth 
Psalm, at family prayer, he rose to lead the devotions of the circle 
around him; he poured out the affluence of his imagination and his 
heart, in the seraphic spirit of that Psalm, calling on everything that 
hath breath to praise the Lord; — “ praise him with the sound of the 
trumpet, with the psaltery and harp;” — but when he came to the 
individual petitions for himself and household, his voice broke down 
at once, his whole style sunk from that of an angel to that of the 
publican, and all his words and tones were those of a stricken, bruised, 
crushed penitent. No other man can repeat the thoughts which he 
uttered, more than the sentiments of Plato can be transferred into 
our ruder speech. Words could not express them. They over¬ 
flowed the appointed channels. They came out in the trembling lip, 
the curved frame, the tremulous, broken, whispering voice. While 
thinking of himself he never cried out with the Apostle: “ I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith 
— but when he heard the words quoted: “ Lord, remember me, when 
thou comest into thy kingdom,” he seized at them; those were just 
the words ; — “ Yes,” he said, “ I can put myself in the place of the 
thief.” Less than the least of all saints, not worthy to be called an 
heir of heaven, a poor child of sin, almost fainting under the burden 
of his guilt, — so didthis disciple whom Jesus loved ever represent 
himself. And all his words were measured and cautious. He would 
ask to be left alone, that he might meditate with a composed mind. 
Over and over did he reiterate the phrase: “I renounce myself ut¬ 
terly, — I renounce my past life.” Even his aptness in the choice 
of phrases failed to express his lowly temper. 

He did not suppose that he was soon to die; he expected, — his 
malady made him tenacious of his expectation, — and some medical 
advisers did not abandon the hope, that he might live to complete 
the volumes, with the plan of which his soul had been charmed. 
But a sudden alteration came over him, on the morning of the nine¬ 
teenth of April. At the break of the next day, about five hours be¬ 
fore he died, it was announced to him that his end was near. The 
thought was new to him. But he believed it. Neither then nor 
ever before in his sickness, did he utter one word of murmuring. 
He felt no terror. When asked if all was peace, he answered with 
his wonted caution: u So far as I can think , it is” With a clear 
4 * 


38 


mind, he sent his love, his ardent love, to his old friends, expressed 
his unmeasured confidence in the Bible, — the first and last book of 
his life’s study, — and then he breathed out his spirit, just as an in¬ 
fant falls asleep. He died as he had lived, and as we expected that 
he would die, — humble, self-distrustful, considerate, loving. He 
walked thoughtful along the banks of Jordan; he stepped his feet in 
the waters, carefully and silently; he reserved his triumphs, until he 
had pressed the solid ground of the other shore. 

“ One does not perhaps fear,” he said in this pulpit four years ago, 
“ one does not perhaps fear so much the pains of death, what is often 
incorrectly termed, the agonies of dissolution, as he does the launch¬ 
ing out on an unknown sea, alone, — plunging into darkness, enter¬ 
ing into a boundless space, where there is nothing tangible, local, or 
visible, where the soul leaves behind all the warm sympathies of life, 
all which can communicate with other beings. However fortified by 
faith, it seems to be a dread experiment. We cling instinctively to 
some sure support, some familiar surrounding objects. But is it not 
a thought full of comfort, that to the believer, his Redeemer stands 
at the very threshold of death, the other side of that thin curtain 
which hides mortality from life; stands there, not as an abstract 
form, or an impalpable vision, but as a dear friend, with his heart 
overflowing with human sympathies. It is like meeting on a foreign 
shore, our best earthly friend, — perfectly familiar with the language 
and all the objects there, a guide most intelligent, most faithful, who 
will anticipate every desire, and in whose society we find the sweetest 
contentment, and the largest accessions of knowledge and delight.” 

So, we doubt not, was our brother ushered into that home of 
elect scholars, for which all his previous discipline had prepared 
him. He had written short memoirs of many illustrious saints, 
whom he expected to meet in that spiritual world. He had learned 
their history by heart. It seems as if he must instantly have felt 
at home among them. It appears to us natural, that he should be 
in their company. In our simple way, we think of him as beatified 
and perfected; yet as changed less than other men, and as retaining 
more of his familiar features, and, above all, his grateful smile. 

After a becoming religious solemnity 1 at Athens, the remains of 
our friend were brought hither. He had been wont to choose a pri- 

1 The time of this solemnity was Wednesday. April 21st, the day succeeding 
Prof. Edwards’s decease. The remains reached Andover on Thursday, April 29th, 
and were interred on Friday afternoon, April 30th. The funeral discourse was 



39 


vate funeral, and a few sorrowing friends met around liis bier. He 
loved to regard a funeral in its more cheerful aspect, and to console 
the mourner’s heart with descriptions of the tender mercy of God, 
and the sure hope of a resurrection. He preferred that the obsequies 
of the dead should be performed with low and gentle accents. And 
so it was done for him. 

The day of his burial was the birth of spring. It was precisely 
such a day as he would have chosen. In the still and balmy atmos¬ 
phere, we bore him along his favorite walk, under the trees then 
budding, as if in sign of the resurrection of the good. We bore him 
through the avenue which he had so often trod, on his way to meet 
his pupils, and to comment on the words: “ Like as a father pitieth 
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him ; for he knoweth 
our frame, he remembereth that we are dust.” We came slowly 
toward this Chapel, where, for the first time in his life, he celebrated 
the dying love of Jesus, and where he partook of the sacred emblems 
for the last time before he drank the new wine in his Father’s house. 
W e came near to his Lecture-room, where he had so often explained 
the words: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in 
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the 
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and 
we shall be changed.” These halls were deserted of their inmates. 
His pupils were scattered; but, in spirit, they seemed to come to¬ 
gether, and to hear from him the words which he once uttered in this 
place, and which he now repeated with the emphasis of silent death: 
“ There is no land of forgetfulness. The grave is vital now. It is a 
region of soft and pleasant slumbers. There is an almighty and an 
omniscient Watcher, over all these sleepers.” Onward we bore him 
toward his grave, so pleasant to him, — in that held of God where 
the corruptible is planted, that it may spring up incorruptible. We 
passed the new resting-place of his venerable colleague, who was not 
disturbed by our sobs and sighs. We laid him down by the little son 
whom he had loved so tenderly, and at whose side he had in his last 
will charged us to bury him, and over whose grave he had inscribed 
the stanza: 

“ These ashes few, this little dust, 

Our Father’s care shall keep, 

Till the last angel rise and break 
The long and peaceful sleep.” 

deferred until Friday, June 25th, because the day of the interment occurred dur¬ 
ing the Seminary vacation, and the students were therefore absent. This circum¬ 
stance explains some of the allusions in the subsequent parts of the discourse. 




40 


We sung his old family hymn, which had been sung by his own re¬ 
quest, at the grave of his mother whom he so much resembled; and 
then the faithful tomb unveiled its bosom, and took the new treasure 
to its trust. And so we buried him; and wended our way back 
slowly and sadly, passing these desolate halls, to his house, yet more 
desolate. There we watched, as he had so often watched there, the 
setting sun. It went down in more than its wonted glory. A few 
clouds were floating about in liquid amber, reminding us that the 
most cheering light comes sometimes from the darkest dispensations. 
The beauties of the world fade not away, when our strong staff 
is broken and our beautiful rod. The government of Jehovah 
moves on as it moved aforetime, and he will sustain his own cause, 
and is dependent on no child of mortality. And, far beyond that 
setting sun, our brother lives and speaks the language of Canaan. 
All his germs of thought have blossomed out and are bearing fruit. 
All his treasured hints have expanded into a science, of which he 
had no conception in this dark world. The plans from which he was 
cut off have ripened into unexpected means of joy. His endeavors 
are rewarded as if they had been accomplished. With his Redeemer, 
a good intention is a good deed, and baffled efforts are as a glorious 
consummation. A disappointment here, is but a preparative for new 
service there. 

I can utter, my brethren, no words of instruction, in this reverend 
and afflicted presence. But there is one, who, being dead, yet speak- 
eth. He whose form has now vanished from us, once taught us the 
lessons to be learned from the grave of pious men. “ When the wise 
and good,” he said in this Chapel, “ when the wise and good are taken 
from the earth, their surviving fellow-disciples may well obtain a 
more impressive idea of the reality of Christian communion, of the 
living links which still bind them to all who have won the prize, or 
who are yet on the field of conflict. If the grave is becoming popu¬ 
lous, so is the region of life and light beyond its confines. Ten thou¬ 
sand chords of sympathy, invisible except to the eye of faith, connect 
our world with that better land. In one sense it is becoming less 
and less unknown. The distance diminishes as the avenues are mul¬ 
tiplying, along which throng holy desires, earnest sympathies, longing 
aspirations. The illumined eye can, occasionally, gain glimpses of 
its cloudless horizon ; the quick ear catch a few notes of its invitations 
of welcome. That is not the world of doubts and phantoms. It is, 
by eminence, the land of life and of conscious existence. Its happy 


41 


shores are even now thronged by earthly natures, perfected in love, 
happy in final exemption from sin; who still, from the very necessity 
of the sympathizing remembrances with which their bosoms overflow, 
cast down looks of loving solicitude to their old friends and compan¬ 
ions, and would, if it were possible, break the mysterious silence, 
and utter audible voices of encouragement, and reach forth signals of 
welcome. These, in the view of faith, are undoubted realities, facts 
which have a stable foundation, truths most comprehensive and fruit¬ 
ful, the distant contemplation of which ennobles the soul, and fits it 
for its long-desired and blessed society. This, therefore, is one of 
the uses of these dispensations, — to give new vigor to faith, a fresh 
reality to that communion of which Christ is the source and the cen¬ 
tre ; to enable one to feel that, however weak and unworthy he may 
be, Ke is still a citizen of a mighty commonwealth, an inmate of an 
imperial household, connected by bonds over which chance and time 
and death have no power, with those who are now pillars in the tem¬ 
ple of God.” 














































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